Russian fugitive tycoon to be taken to Moscow on Sunday

HANOI, May 17. /TASS/. Russian businessman Sergei Polonsky will be delivered from Cambodia to Moscow on Sunday, his lawyer Slavik Brsoyan told TASS on Sunday.

"At night, he was put on a plane followed by two Russian law enforcers and was deported to Russia," he said. "My information is he will be in Moscow today."

The lawyer said only Polonsky is deported to Russia out of all those detained earlier at the businessman's yacht. They all remain detained.

He said he did not know what investigation procedures may be used to his client.

"We do not know anything yet," he said. "What happened in Cambodia is beyond limits, as Polonsky was completely deprived of an opportunity of legal assistance and on his own he was sent out from the country in such a rush."

Besides, he said, a Russia lawyer, who came to Polonsky in Cambodia, was detained on Saturday.

"A lawyer arrived yesterday to see him, received a visa, came to see him at the migration jail where Polonsky was, but was told he would not be able to see him before Monday. And in the evening he was detained. We are not aware of the reason," Brsoyan said.

He has not named the detained lawyer, saying they were colleagues at a law firm. The reasons for detention are not clear yet. Brsoyan said his colleagues hope the lawyer would be released soon.

The businessman was arrested on May 15 on his own yacht a few dozen kilometres off the coast of the city of Sihanoukville along with his five assistants. The Interpol issued a wanted notice for Polonsky at the request of Russia’s Interior Ministry. In Russia, the businessman is a defendant in the criminal cases of embezzlement of funds of interest holders in the construction of the Rublyovo Riviera and Kutuzov Mile residential complexes.

A district court in Moscow has charged him in absentia with fraud on an especially large scale carried out by an organized group. The Russian side earlier addressed an inquiry to Cambodia on the entrepreneur’s extradition, but the Cambodian court ruled that Polonsky could not be extradited to Russia, since a criminal case had been opened against him in the country on bodily blows to local citizens.

Last December, the Russian side again sent a request to the Cambodian authorities regarding Polonsky’s extradition.